Today we use Little Spaces: Spacecraft to come up with a science fiction-themed story to cause trouble in someone’s game. The collection of terms today includes:

Size: Tiny

State; Adrift

Population: 5

Crew status: Wounded

Mission: Science

Destination: Galaxy

The result reminds me a bit of something from Firefly or Star Trek mixed with a bit of Alien…

“When the ISS Valiant left on their year-long mission to map the edge of a new system found just on the edge of a nearby galaxy, the crew was all smiles. This was what they had prepared for all their lives – pushing the envelope of known space and adding to the archives for future generations. They were a small ship with a good crew of 78 men and women ready for whatever came their way… or so they thought.

The first solar system they came to showed signs of life on the fourth planet, a small green world with two moons and quite a few life signs. The Unity, one of three small shuttles on board, was sent down with a landing party. And that’s when the trouble started.

They landed on the edge of what seemed to be a relatively quiet, underpopulated area. As soon as they touched down and left the craft, they were besieged by vicious plant-based pygmies. Though primitive, they used fire and poisoned spears to battle the woefully under armed scientists. Losing three of the six people in the landing party, they fled back to the Valiant. But they were not alone. Spores from the pygmies traveled with them, somehow going undetected by scanning equipment on board.

Within days members of the crew began suffering from a strange disease. The survivors of the landing crew, poisoned and wounded, became carriers, spreading spores to everyone else on board. Once the tiny spores entered the ventilation system it worked throughout the ship in no time.

The Trinity and the Doubloon, the other two shuttles served as small islands of sanity and two groups made it off the Valiant before the crew lost total control and it entered the atmosphere, breaking into a million shooting stars towards the surface. The Doubloon suffered some sort of piloting or mechanical failure and followed shortly, but the Trinity made it out of orbit and set a course back to the edge of populated space.

The Trinity crew was hurt and going mad the same way those on the Valiant did, but the concentrations of spores was much lower… Even so, any ship who picked them up would suffer the same fate…”